breaking hearts a hundred times
by Anrheithwyr
Summary: Roxanne goes to comfort her older cousin after the latter has suffered a great tragedy. The only problem is that she has done this before, many times, but Dominique can't seem to see the truth.


"Domi?" the little girl asked, and began to pout when there was no reaction, tapping her foot to get the attention of her cousin, arms crossed, lip stuck out. "Domi, I want to play. Domi, play with me."

The little girl was named Raegan, who was around the age of five, and the cousin was Dominique, age forty-seven. Actually, Raegan was actually Dominique's _second _cousin, but it was much easier for all involved to just call each other cousins.

"Domi, come be in my musical," Raegan asked her cousin, shaking the older woman's arm in an effort to get her attention. "It's about a wolf that lives in a hollow tree and dances around with hollow skeletons, singing out all his problems. You can be a fairy or a skeleton, if you want."

Still no reaction, as Dominique sat still on her bed, knees curled up so that they rested under her chin, making her look like a child hiding from the monsters in the dark.

"Domi, did you hear a word I said?" Raegan demanded, growing annoyed with Dominique's lack of response and began shaking the woman's arm, causing her to rock back and forth. "Listen to me, Domi. _Listen to me._"

She frowned, after giving her cousin a concerned look, eyebrows furrowing with thought, Raegan ran off to find her mother, hoping that maybe her mum could do something to make Dominique talk.

When Roxanne stopped by her cousin's room to check on her, she saw the forty-seven year old woman sitting with her knees tucked under her chin, staring off at the wall like it was going to reveal all the secrets in the world to her if she focused long enough.

"Dom? Dominique?" Roxanne asked her cousin quietly, moving over to the bed that they had set up for Dominique. Roxanne placed a hand on Dominique's arm, gently tapping her. "Dominique, are you okay? The kids are getting worried about you. _I'm _getting worried about you, to be honest."

"We're supposed to go visit his parents next month," Dominique said in a hoarse voice, turning to look at Roxanne with hollow eyes. "We're going to take the girls to France for the end of the summer, so we can see his parents and…and Ciel's _other_ family. Evangeline's daughter just finished school at Beauxbatons…we're going to go visit, Ciel's got everything planned out…"

"Dominique, do you know who I am? Do you recognise me? Do you know where you ever are?" Roxanne was getting concerned about her cousin's dull expression and the flat tone in her voice, the way she spoke of her husband as if…

As if he were still alive, instead of slowing rotting in a hole in the ground, eyes closed and heart stilled forever, just like Roxanne's brother nearly thirty years before.

Ciel, her loving and caring husband of twenty-three mostly harmonious years, who had been sitting in his grave for thirteen years, but Dominique would not, or could not, admit that he was dead.

"Have you seen him, Roxy?" Dominique asked in that same emotionless tone, giving Roxanne another blank look, twisting her hands in her lap. "Have you seen Ciel? I can't seem to find him. You don't suppose he went off to France without me, do you? I swear, that man has no sense in his head; he'd probably lose himself trying to get home if I wasn't around to help him."

"Domi," Roxanne replied in a sad voice, moving closer to give her cousin a comforting hug. "Domi, don't you remember? Ciel died, dear. He's not _here_, anymore, don't you remember, Domi? You were at the funeral. You helped scatter dirt over the grave."

"Was I?" Dominique asked, sounding vaguely shocked as she leaned to pat Roxanne's hand. "Was I?" she asked again. "I don't remember doing that. Odd…what happened to him? Is he okay now?"

Roxanne had had to explain to Dominique about her husband's death several times now, through rage and terror, through screaming and long fits of silence. But this one was the worst, because it was like talking to a wall.

Dominique simply just wouldn't allow her mind to process the concept of her husband being dead, instead forcing him to remain alive but distant, instead allowing her mind to make up wild excuses about where had gone, but only confusing herself even more in the process.

"Dominique," she said again a tired voice, exhausted from watching after her two young kids and Dominique and the house and her job and Dominque's girls. "Dominique, Ciel is no longer here, do you understand me? He passed away thirteen days ago, do you remember that? You were at St. Mungo's with him. We _buried _Ciel in a grave, do you remember that? You were there as well. The funeral was in France, since that is where he asked to be buried, and then we brought you and the girls back here."

"Oh…" Dominique trailed off, letting her fingers skim over Roxanne's arms and over the blankets until she was stretched out like a cat. "Oh."

Roxanne let her older cousin lay on the bed like that for a few minutes, sitting next to in total silence, just listening to Dominique mumble _oh _and cry onto the blankets.

Roxanne thought she might break, listening to her cousin have a meltdown on the little twin bed they'd set her up on; she had gone through this process with Dominique at least a dozen times in the past week, and it still hadn't made explaining things once more any easier on Roxanne's part.

She hated it, hated the way Dominique was mentally shutting down, allowing herself to live in a fantasy land where her husband was still alive and only just avoiding her. Roxanne hated that Ciel had died and left Dominique all alone, confused and cracked and fading.

Suddenly, the crying stopped, and Roxanne shifted to look down at Dominique's red face, streaked with tears and smudged where the blankets had dug into her skin.

"Are you okay now, Domi?" she asked quietly, rubbing her fingers in what was supposed to be circular patterns around Dominique's back in order to comfort her. "Do you need something, maybe a glass of water or something? I can go get you anything you need."

Dominique took a deep, shaky breath, looking up at Roxanne with blurry, teary eyes, letting her hand slip into Roxanne's lap in quivering, flurried motions so that Dominique was partly resting on her younger cousin.

"When is Ciel coming back?" Dominique asked in a mumbling voice, fingers dancing in hurried movements as she spoke. "When is he going to come back? I miss him, I want him to come back. Is he going to come back soon, Roxy? Is he on his way back?"

Roxanne had explained Ciel's death so many times now, letting Dominique shift through a hundred different emotions as she tried to process and make sense of something that her mind and heart would simply just not let be true.

Roxanne had explained the truth _every time _that Dominique had asked about her husband. Every time, without fail, she had calmly and quietly consoled her cousin about his death.

"Of course, dear," she said now, resigned. "Of course he's coming back soon, of course he is. I've just gotten an owl from him this morning saying he's on his way now."

"Oh, good," Dominique said, sinking back into the bed with a smile on her face, sighing contently. "I was starting to miss him. He's been gone forever."

"Yes," Roxanne said, wishing she could just make the guilt of lying go away. "Yes, he's been gone for a while, but he's on his way back to you right now, I promise you, he's coming back."


End file.
